


Staring Down

by onward_came_the_meteors



Series: October 2020 Prompts [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Tower, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Gen, One Shot, POV Third Person, Post-Avengers (2012), Team Dynamics, little bit of angst here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26795359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onward_came_the_meteors/pseuds/onward_came_the_meteors
Summary: Avengers Tower. Team training. Bruce Banner.What could go wrong?
Series: October 2020 Prompts [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947679
Comments: 2
Kudos: 40





	Staring Down

**Author's Note:**

> Day 3, for the prompt: "held at gunpoint."

Sometimes Bruce had to remind himself that he hadn’t moved into Avengers Tower for a peaceful environment.

What were his reasons, then? Nobody had exactly asked him that yet, at least not in those words, but he wasn’t blind to the skeptical looks he’d gotten—both from S.H.I.E.L.D. and from a couple of the other Avengers themselves—when he’d packed his duffle bag and slid into Tony Stark’s car. The looks that said “are you  _ sure  _ this is a good idea” and “haven’t you considered all of the ways that this could go very, very wrong” and “you realize you’re free to go now that you helped track down the tesseract, right?”

(The answers, because Bruce had asked them to himself many a sleepless night, were, in order:  _ absolutely not, of course I have, _ and  _ I haven’t been “free to go” in five years _ )

(So maybe it was better that no one asked him these questions aloud)

He didn’t really know himself, why he’d had Tony’s offer on his mind since the helicarrier and finally accepted sometime after shawarma. He supposed it definitely had something to do with Tony himself—the man did not know how to let an idea go once it got into his head, and apparently Bruce Banner had gotten into his head—and with the state-of-the-art labs that could only be bought with a billionaire’s budget, and the fact that probably some of the only people in the world who could hold their own against the Hulk for at least a couple minutes were all living there and could respond to any emergencies.

But if he was being completely honest, there was a part of him that just enjoyed belonging there. Being part of a team, even one with the special brand of dysfunctional that came with magical hammers being left on top of the fridge and assassins living in the ceiling vents.

So, yes, living in the tower did have its benefits. Most of the time, anyway.

The rest of the time… had he mentioned that it wasn’t exactly a peaceful environment?   


_ Crash. _

Bruce had been squeezing his eyes shut in an attempt to block out the relentless noises from downstairs, but at that latest in a long series of crashes, he resigned himself to not being able to sleep in any longer.

He shrugged the pillow off of his head and sat up, rubbing his hand over his eyes. His glasses were on the table next to his bed, so the clock might as well have been blurry red scribbles, but the pale hints of sunlight barely peeking through the windows were enough to tell him that it was definitely too early to be awake.

_ Unless you’re an Avenger, apparently.  _ Now that he thought about it, Bruce did remember Steve mentioning something yesterday about a training exercise that morning, but since Bruce had assumed he wouldn’t be included, he hadn’t listened all that hard and figured “morning” meant sometime after the sun had actually risen.

_ That’ll teach me. _

Bruce slid out of bed and pulled on a sweater before heading downstairs.

It was kind of eerie, to be in a building that was essentially empty—especially this early in the not-quite-morning—and still have all the lights on without having to flick a switch. Apparently JARVIS liked to do things like that, and he appreciated it—the tower was completely clean-energy thanks to the arc reactor technology, after all—but he did draw the line the time he’d gone to step into the shower to find it already running.

Actually, he could probably have asked JARVIS where the other Avengers were—but as it turned out, they weren’t too hard to find.

Bruce followed the sounds of banging, clashing, and what sounded like—he hoped it wasn’t—miniature explosions down the hallway and to the door of the training room. He hesitated before opening it; he’d never actually been inside before, even though he was pretty sure Steve  _ slept  _ in here sometimes.

He pushed open the door and peeked inside. The training room was bigger than he’d thought, as though it had been built for double the capacity of its current users. Shiny new machines lined one wall, along with a pile of punching bags, some functional and some… well, broken-in was one way to say it. There was also what looked like a series of archery targets along the opposite wall, all attached to a system that could probably move them around for harder practice.

The center of the room, however, was home to a large open ring, in which five superheroes were currently trying to beat each other up.

And succeeding, Bruce noted as Thor was knocked backward into a wall by a punch from Iron Man.

Everyone was so focused that they didn’t even see Bruce come in, completely wrapped up in the training exercise. Tony was in the armor, flying a few feet above it all and relying more on metal fists than the actual deadly repulsors. Steve was wearing what appeared to be regular S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue gear instead of his suit, but he was still flinging the shield around with alarming accuracy, letting it ricochet off the walls and come back to trip up one of the others. Natasha was handling the rest of the tripping-up, moving deceptively quickly as she knocked Clint on his ass. Clint was rolling to his feet in another second, however, backing up to the edge and taking aim with soft-tipped practice arrows that were apparently the source of the miniature explosions. Because that was exactly the type of thing Tony would design for training sessions.

Steve ducked behind his shield just in time to avoid the blast from the explosive arrow and spun around in the same movement to hurl it at Thor, who was running back from where he’d been slammed into the wall with no obvious repercussions. Thor dodged and raised his hammer— _ hopefully just to hit the floor, right? _ —only to be distracted by Tony flying over his head like a very large mosquito. Metal gauntlets wrapped around the hammer and tried to yank it out of Thor’s grip, but Thor just stood there with a raised eyebrow as Tony was flung away in an intentional midair somersault.

“Right, unworthy,” came Tony’s slightly distorted voice from inside the helmet. “Gotta remember that part.” He changed course just in time to avoid the wall.

“It is still entertaining.” Thor grinned and launched himself at Natasha, who deftly rolled away and came up brandishing two of her handguns.

Clint glanced over his shoulder after blocking a punch from Steve. “If you’re gonna use those, remember to say ‘bang’ when you shoot one of us.” His smirk vanished as Steve aimed another punch and he broke off to dodge.

“I feel like that gives me a certain disadvantage that—” Natasha blew her hair out of her face. “—that kinda undermines my whole MO.”

“You’re telling this to the guy using fake arrows?”

Steve snatched up his shield from where Clint had knocked it out of his hand. He wasn’t even out of breath. “All right, guys, I think I mentioned to keep the talking to a minimum?” 

“But I thought we were trying to replicate an  _ accurate _ fight scenario?”

Steve’s sigh was lost as Thor started laughing. 

Tony had regained his balance and was circling in the air. “And I don’t know what you’re complaining about, Barton—those arrows might actually give someone a bruise if you fired them really, really hard.”

“Oh, are you volunteering? Good to know.”

“Like you could catch me, Birdbrain.”

The next moment, one of the fake arrows had exploded against the side of the Iron Man suit, causing him to wheel back around to steer clear of Natasha and Thor.

Bruce watched all of this with a reluctant grin pulling at his face, almost forgetting that he was supposed to be annoyed at them all for waking them up. That was probably for the best, though, and he leaned back to settle himself against the wall.

Only problem was, he misjudged how far back the wall was, and ended up bumping into a low shelf of loose equipment pieces that clinked together loudly.

Everyone else snapped their heads in the direction of the noise, the fight put on pause. Thor quickly caught his hammer again after it had scarcely left his hand and Clint barely stopped himself from tackling Steve.

And Natasha didn’t stop, spinning around faster than thought until the guns in her hand were pointed at the source of the sound.

At him.

Bruce caught his breath. The entire room shrunk to the size of those two black circles and his ears filled with the distant sound of roaring. Because he’d been on this end of a gun before, more times than he could count, and if there was one thing the Other Guy understood it was that guns meant  _ danger danger danger— _

Natasha’s eyes widened suddenly, and she dropped the guns at once. There was a low clatter as they hit the ground, but she paid them no attention, staring at Bruce in rarely-displayed horror.

Behind her, the other Avengers were silent. Tony had flipped up his faceplate and had settled the suit on the floor almost soundlessly. Steve had dropped the arm carrying the shield to his side as Clint took a hesitant step forward beside him. Thor was gripping Mjolnir more tightly than usual, and Bruce thought distractedly that there were little sparks of lightning flickering at the place where his hand met the handle.

Natasha stood up, very slowly. Bruce didn’t move. “I’m sorry.”

_ That  _ made him look up. “No, it’s fine.” He searched for a way to make that sound not like a lie. “I’m used to people pointing guns at me.”

_ A cabin in the nighttime heat and a mountain in the snow and a city teeming with life and a wide-open green field and— _

He shrugged and offered a smile. A slightly embarrassed one, if he was being honest, because  _ oh god  _ what was he  _ doing  _ reacting like this over something so small and ridiculous, he was supposed to be the levelheaded one, almost entirely because he’d spent the last chunk of his life trying  _ not  _ to let things like this affect him—

Bruce realized that his hands were fidgeting over each other and shoved them in his pockets. He really wished Natasha would stop staring at him like that.

Finally, a crack appeared, and her gaze softened. “Well, that’s a depressing thing to say.”

“Better depressing than angry.” Bruce had hardly gotten the words out of his mouth before Natasha snorted.

“Stop that.” She glanced back at the other four, who were shifting around as though unsure whether or not the tension had been cleared yet. “We were almost ready to take a break anyway, right, guys?”

Thor’s eyes lit up. “For breakfast?”

“I second that,” Clint said. Both of them were still watching Bruce and Natasha—Thor with a rather depressing look himself and Clint with narrowed calculation—but their tones were casual, as was the way they slung their weapons across their backs and started out of the training ring.

“Thirded.” The Iron Man suit began to open up like a mechanical shell, and Tony stepped out and jerked a finger at Steve. “That is, if the Star-Spangled Man with a Plan here doesn’t object.”

Steve rolled his eyes but nodded. “Sure. Breakfast sounds good.”

As the team left the room—in varying states of stiffness, catching their breath, and rubbing at bruises in a way they thought was inconspicuous—Bruce let out his breath and trailed after them.

The faint roar in his ears had vanished, but he still felt the  _ unsettled  _ hanging over him that wasn’t quite so easy to shake off. The elevator was right down the hall, though, and like everything else in this tower, it was top-of-the-line, so getting to the labs would be very fast, and then if he had a few hours alone to work he could try and put this out of his head—

Bruce was almost out the door when Natasha slowed her pace. She stretched her arms behind her head in a way that was a little too deliberate, one of her hands brushing the top of his shoulder.

He stopped and looked at her with raised eyebrows. Natasha just tilted her head in the direction of the kitchen before her hand slid away and she was headed after the rest of the team.

And Bruce followed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
